Anonymous wrote:Op here. I don't have connections to harvard or MIT, but I know a friend graduated from MIT decades ago. If we do tours, we will do guided paid tours for harvard & MIT. We will check out the museum at harvard, and to answer pp's question, only curious george's store is closed. I am not sure if kids can handle all of the walking. I am hoping that if my early elementary kid likes boston or campus, it may give him more motivation word hard to achieve this dream.

Schools do not charge for tours, but they don't want little kids on them. They are completely inappropriate for that age group. Having gone on 30+ of these with my now college students, they all follow a similar format. A formal presentation in a conference room that takes 45 minutes to an hour followed by a walking tour of the campus. Your kids will be bored to tears! Oh, and when you sign up for them, they ask for the kid's graduation year. I can't imagine their systems even go out to the year 2035 or whenever your kids graduate!

Do not waste a day dragging a preschooler and young elementary school age kid around college on vacation. Kids spend enough time in formal classrooms, let them learn by having some fun and relaxing in a new city and environment. THere is so much history, art and nature in Boston. When they're older do the college tours. More than likely, they're not going to remember anything specific from vacations they take this young. But as the old saying goes, they'll remember how you made them feel. Don't make it bored by college.

The idea that a seven year old would be able to draw the connection between a college tour they took at that age and attending that college as a student is laughable. At that age, they *might* understand that the connection between "working hard at school" and getting to be a marine biologist or astronaut or whatever, but the understanding of causality is still so undeveloped. But, to go from "I walked around a pretty brick campus as a seven year old --> I will study harder as a high school sophomore --> I will attend Harvard" is so far of a reach as to be nonsensical.

Plus, it's way more likely that they'll get bored out of their mind.

I think OP is a troll too, but we've walked our kiddo around both our colleges--fun! But obviously the goal wasn't to encourage them to attend, lol.

I do think a school with deep history, such as Oxford or what have you, are interesting to explore. Kinda like a museum. We were in Princeton for an overnight stay while driving up to Boston and walked around the campus for awhile. It was fun! Our four-year-old liked climbing on all the tiger statues.

So if you just want to look at old buildings and have your kids run around on quads, sounds good to me.